Zvi Schreiber, founder and CEO of Freightos – the internet marketplace for the trillion-dollar international freight industry. Zvi was previously the CEO for Lightech which was acquired by G.E., and was also the founder and CEO of Unicorn Solutions which was acquired by IBM. Additionally, Zvi was the founder of G.ho.st, a predecessor of DropBox, which ended in a fire sale. He’s spoken widely and was in many articles and patents. He has a PhD in Computer Science and he’s the author of Fizz: Nothing Is as It Seems, which tells the history of physics as a novel.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Mixmax How many hours of sleep do you get? — 7 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “It’s okay for startups to take on a big conservative industry”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:08 – Nathan introduces Zvi to the show 02:23 – Freightos is targeting the world of international freight 02:45 – 90% of the products sold in the West are imported – the entire lifestyle is dependent on international freight 03:18 – The biggest cost components in the freight industry is the trucking, ocean liners, port handling, and airlines 04:38 – “This big industry is very inefficient” 04:52 – Asking for a quote from a big freight forwarding company can take about 3 days 05:45 – Freightos is the “Expedia” for freight 06:09 – Freightos makes money by taking a cut of the transaction 06:24 – They basically do the marketing for the seller 06:40 – Freight forwarders are companies that arrange freight like Expeditors and H. Robinson 06:59 – Some more known forwarders are UPS and FedEx 07:24 – The buyers in this marketplace are the import/export companies 08:46 – Freightos helps with importing/exporting and not door-to-door deliveries 09:15 – Freightos only takes 2% from the freight forwarders’ transactions 09:35 – They don’t take any percentage from the buyer’s end 10:02 – Many freight forwarders are using Freightos’ software to automate their own pricing 10:23 – Freightos is a SaaS business 10:33 – They’ve recently raised $25M from an investment round led by G.E. 11:21 – In 2016, 90% of their revenue came from SaaS because they’ve just launched the marketplace that year 11:35 – Without the SaaS, freight forwarders are not able to do instant pricing 11:54 – The SaaS platform is serving about 1,000 freight forwarders all around the world 12:04 – Freightos is the market leader for the SaaS 12:22 – There are only a few thousand freight forwarders that matter and Freightos has 1,000 of them as customers 12:35 – January 2012 was the launch date of Freightos 12:43 – Freightos’ team size is about 150 people across the world 13:17 – Every shipment involves 2 countries 13:26 – Their biggest office is in Jerusalem and Barcelona 14:07 – Their customers pay less than $1K/month to tens of thousands per month for the subscription 14:43 – The reason why most marketplace startups fail is because of the chicken-and-egg problem 15:06 – Freightos spent 4 years selling SaaS to companies 15:40 – Freightos’ first year revenue was 0 15:45 – Their first revenue came in 2013 16:25 – It was in 2015 when Freightos earned their first million 16:56 – Each month, there are about several hundreds to a thousand transactions in their marketplace 17:33 – Freightos is starting to educate freight forwarders and importers/exporters that they don’t need to wait anymore for pricing 18:16 – There are thousands of buyers already using their software 20:03 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Our lifestyle is heavily dependent on imported goods. Find an industry’s pain point and start from there. Don’t be afraid to create a startup in a big and conservative industry.
Resources Mentioned:
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio booksShow Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
